Mike Hamm: Great potential for urban agriculture in Detroit

The Detroit we remember in the 1950s is not the Detroit we see today. As a thriving city of two million people, Detroit’s 139 square miles of land worked. Flash forward 60 years and Detroit still has an infrastructure designed for two million people with a population just under one million. What should be done with all the extra space?

Detroit has no major supermarkets within the city limits. There are retail outlets and corner grocery shops but they’re limited, Hamm said.

“One of the big issues there is how do we ensure as a city and as a state that helps support that city, that there is in fact food access for all Detroiters given 30 percent unemployment, there’s a high degree of poverty so resources are somewhat limited but people still do have resources and by and large people want access to good food," Hamm said.

Hamm works with Kathryn Colasanti, a graduate student who analyzed Detroit’s publically-owned space. Colasanti’s study focused on open land where buildings had already been torn down. She didn’t include parks or right of ways.

Colasanti discovered about nine square miles of empty available land within the city limits. If her study included land with abandoned buildings, that space would be doubled or tripled, Hamm said. Hamm and Colasanti determined with just 2,000 acres Detroit could produce up to 75 percent of the vegetables needs and about 50 percent of the fruit needs for 900,000 people.

With the use of high-tunnel technology which is already in place at the MSU Student Organic Farm, four-season extension technology and controlled atmospheric storage, Detroit could become a food production center for Michiganders in the region, Hamm said.

The Garden Resource Collaborative has paired up with the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network to create these small scale farms so Detroiters can become their own entrepreneurs. MSU Extension is working to model the economic and production potential of a three-acre farm.

But Hamm knows turning Detroit into an agricultural hub isn’t going to be easy.

“If you think of 2,000 acres and you think of three acres, it would take 700 new farmers … and my personal opinion is in the next 10 years it’d be difficult, if not impossible to generate that many farmers inside Detroit,” Hamm said.

Hamm suggests different scales of agriculture will be needed to reach the 2,000-acre goal. Two companies are looking at creating 30- 40-acre farms. These larger scale farms would complement medium and small scale farms to realistically reach 2,000 acres, Hamm said.

But adding large scale farms to a city environment presents another set of issues – soil contamination.

“That’s where I think the research of the experiment station becomes so important,” Hamm said. “How would we check for that? How would we monitor that? How would we reduce the contamination, where it’s possible on a scale where you can’t just dig and replace? So research becomes important in terms of bioremediation techniques and large-scale testing techniques where you can use statistical sampling and ensure the safety of the food for the public down the road.”

Hamm doesn’t think research will get in the way of starting now. Instead the research could provide an opportunity for the experiment station to become a leader in urban agriculture. That way, the MSU Extension can play the role of a facilitator for the urban agriculture programs in Detroit to make sure the large and small scale farms work together.

Hamm hasn’t directly spoken with Detroit Mayor Dave Bing, but he has a sense that Bing is supportive of the urban agriculture movement in the city. “Concrete things emerging on the landscape in Detroit, that’s going to be the indicator of success,” Hamm said.